


The creaking door

by Purrrkwood



Category: Pushing Daisies
Genre: Experiments, Gen, Suicide Attempt, mention of self-harm, what if
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-08
Updated: 2014-10-08
Packaged: 2018-02-20 08:11:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2421509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Purrrkwood/pseuds/Purrrkwood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Everything will be fine, because it will go as always, and how should it go? Little sweet lab rat, you are ours. This is your life, my beautiful test animal, my splendid abomination.</i><br/>That, that was how it went. He constantly thought about death because dead bodies cannot die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The creaking door

**Author's Note:**

> I feel bad.  
> So, this took me a while because I'm still not very used to writing in english. I'm not convinced about some parts, but I decided to post anyway, because keeping it in its folder wouldn't help. So, before I end up deleting it, here it is!  
> It's not a very original idea, but any way to practice is good, I suppose!^^

The door creaked. It was a slow, creeping sound, ancient like that of an old wooden house where time has taken over and averything schreechs at the slightest gust of wind. It creaked like a cry, like the fearful whine of a wounded animal.  
  
That was all because of the hinges, they were old and rusty. He had told one of the nurses not long before. She had smiled and answered that someone would fix them, but no one had come and the door kept creaking under the torture of all the people going back and forth from his room. No one noticed, as if the sound was all in his mind.  
  
During the short time span while the door creaked everything could happen. Between the moment when the handle started lowering and that when the hallway appeared between the doorposts there was a whole world made of thoughts and questions. Of expectations. And fear. When the door opened the heartbeat accelerated, the breath shortened and the eyes shut, every time like the first.  
  
The door creaked and soft steps on the white floor followed. The steps didn't have the same sound: they were delicate, cautious and gentle like the woman who took them. They were one of the few sounds he wasn't afraid of. When her face peeped from the corridor, Ned smiled.  
  
"Hi, Ned."  
  
"Chuck..."  
  
She wasn't her, she wasn't his Charlotte. He hadn't seen her anymore since the day of the funerals, a memory that seemed to belong to a very distant time, almost not his, but it didn't matter. That voice constantly speaking in his mind kept repeating it: Chuck wasn't there. His Charlotte had a round face and flushed cheeks, the eyes shining in the summer sunlight and the laugh like the sound of a thousand bells. This Charlotte was different, she was wrong: her face was too sharp, the redness on her cheeks too fake, the eyes cold under the sad white lamps and Ned hadn't heard her laughing a single time.  
  
She wasn't Chuck, she was just some copy to whom his mind and body clinged desperately as to a lifebelt, the one that prevented him from drowning in the dark sea that filled his white cell. She knew. They knew. They had planned it all, because they knew he would quickly go mad without something fixed to rely on. So they provided him with that little lie, so terribly false, so terribly important. And the tortures, the wounds, the experiments, all of them seemed less dreadful when she was by his side. Everything was calculated with perfect accuracy. It scared him, but it didn't matter: he needed her. He wasn't even sure Charlotte was her real name, as far as he knew she could have invented it, but it didn't matter. He had to believe she was real, as real as the creak of the door that no one seemed to hear.  
  
Chuck smiled bending over him, curled up on the cold floor with his legs close to his chest. Her fingers ran through his dirty hair, gently untangling the knotted strands, as if she was taking care of a child. After all, he was: he was a child in her hands, obedient and tame, docile as a lamb. They knew this too, so they sent her: because he would never hurt her. Not Chuck, not his best friend. Never.  
  
Her hands stopped and Ned understood why she had come. The syringe was still in her overall's pocket, but she would pull it out shortly and he would let her. Because that was how it went; because he had stopped struggling on an unknown day long before. He didn't know how long, just that it was a long time. He remembered only vaguely some fragments of a past life different from the present, a life outside those four walls made of colours, scents and flavours; and sometimes, during the night, images of that life flew in his mind: a living room, a kitchen, the sweet enveloping smell of pies and the laughs of two children playing in the garden. But the more time passed, the more those images proved to be just that: dreams, stories. The truth was that he didn't remember anymore the smell of pies, if it had ever existed, and neither the scent of spices and grass. The truth was that he was just a white person in a white room. It had always been that way and it would always be that way.  
  
The needle entered his arm and went out almost without him noticing. He didn't pay attention anymore. That was how it went. Chuck put the syringe back in the pocket with a smile of circumstance.  
  
"The doctor will come and get you soon. They just want to make some checks, nothing more. Everything will be fine." Her voice sounded like she was playing a part; Ned ha heard those word countless times, like an old jammed tape constantly repeating the same verse of a song. Everything will be fine, this was their song and he had memorized it.  
  
 _Everything will be fine, because it will go as always, and how should it go? Little sweet lab rat, you are ours. This is your life, my beautiful test animal, my splendid abomination._  
  
Ned shivered. He suddenly felt his muscles becoming heavier, his reflexes weakining and his sight clouded. Again, like it had been other times and would be every day after. And inside his chest his heart quickened at that thought, while his breath shortened. His head started spinning, but it wasn't an effect of the drug.  
  
Oh, panic. It was surprising how it could still cling to him and crrawl under his skin like a cold invisible snake. Its visits were even more terrifying than the doctors': they were sudden, unmotivated, they were black and suffocating; yet they were the only thing that reminded him he was human, something more than a dead body to examine. Dead bodies don't know fear. And even if Ned didn't know exactly what he was afraid of, he felt fear's bites and screams.  
  
"Chuck..." he whispered, his fingers convulsively clasping the air, tring to grab something. But she was distant and didn't let him touch her.  
  
"Chuck!" this time it was a scream and his voice broke on the last letter. She looked at him. Her eyes stared at him with pity, but it was the pity of someone who watches a wounded animal suffer without doing anything.  
  
"Everything will be fine, Ned."  
  
"Chuck, no...!"  
  
"Everything fine."  
  
Then the world was white. White like the walls, like the light, like the uniform of a doctor approaching him.  
  
After all, that was how it went.  
   
  
\-------------------------  
  
   
He dreamt about the frogs.  
  
It was a curious story, the frogs one: it was the proof that it doesn't necessarily take something great to overturn your entire life, but on the contrary, it's often the small things that determine the final outcome. Like frogs, for example. Why should frogs be considered something important?  
  
And yet the had been important. Enough to catch the attention of the wrong person during biology class. Ned knew back then that it wasn't a good idea, but the call of misdeeds had got the better of him and his classmates' terrified screams at the sight of the big amphibia suddenly starting to move had been epic. He wondered if things would have been different if that day he had swallowed the humiliation instead of seeking revenge.  
  
But the frogs had been awaken and someone had seen. And for a simple touch it had ended there, in a lab in a place that maybe someone told him, but he didn't remember anymore. It had started with gentle words, had continued with trickery and it would end... who knew if it would ever end.  
  
The pain woke him up. He shifted, feeling the mattress under him and his arm sent a jolt of pain that made him groan. he opened his eyes and hadn't it been for the needle inserted in the crook of his elbow he would have thought it was all a dream. But it was just an IV needle. Charlotte had not lied. Not this time, at least.  
  
They had started sedating him during tests several years before, after yet another hysterics, the one that had marked the limit of endurance, both for him and staff. That time it hadn't been just screams, cries and shoves, but a fight ended in the worst way possible. He hadn't really been willing to do what he had done: he had reacted in fear and it wasn't his fault if one of the nurses had deemed wise to keep a scalpel in his pocket; it wasn't his fault if the tool had feel on the floor during the struggle; and it wasn't his fault if he had grabbed the first thing he had found to defend himself. But that didn't change the consequence and the poor wretch had been urgently carried away while a pool of blood, clealry coming from a severed femoral artery, spreaded on the floor. And he had been confined in a small narrow cell, with his arms tied in a straitjacket, like a madman. Maybe in that moment he had truly been mad. But he was also sure that, had he been more focused, he would have used that scalpel anyway and tried to cause a worse injury. he would have aimed at the throat and then nothing would have saved the stupid nurse who had kept a blade less than a meter away from a mentally unstable patient.  
  
The incident had made clear that the situation was just unbearable; and to prevent anyone from being killed for real the doctors had decided it wasn't necessary to keep him awake during tests. Not all of them, at least. It had worked, he had become far more docile since then: the idea of sleeping and avoid seeing those thing, had comforted him. Now everything was much farther and dream-like; he could pretend it was just his imagination.  
  
Even though it wasn't, even though he woke and the pulsing wounds reminded him that every second was real and not part of a nightmare. And nothing could do the tears, the screams or any begging: you can't wake up from reality.  
  
His fingers closed around the IV needle. He pulled and it came out of his arm ina  single movement. Ned screamed, while the tears invaded his eyes and a pang rised from his arm, attacking his brain like a sharp blade.  
  
And he welcomed the pain like an old friend, because dead bodies couldn't feel pain. The adrenalin rushed into his veins, making him feel more alive than ever and the smell of his own blood smelled like the sweetest scent. That, that was how it went. He constantly thought about death because dead bodies cannot die.  
  
The needle sparkled in his hand, capturing the light of the lamp. A drop of blood escaped his index finger. The colour was that of the strawberries he always dreamed of, but its taste was completely wrong, nothing like the sweetness of that memory.  
  
He stared for a moment at that tiny piece of metal. Dead bodies couldn't die, but after all people also believed they couldn't come back to life and he had proved them wrong many times. So, what about verifying that other convinction?  
  
Outside the door no one passed by, not a single noise echoed in that wing of the building. Ned lifted his hand, touching his neck with the pointy end of the needle. He felt his heart accelerate at the thought of shoving in that tiny object, letting it cut the carotid. He could make it, somehow, they had left him with an unusual but effective weapon and just because they didn't consider him capable of hurting himself, it didn't mean he wouldn't. It would be as easy as drinking a glass of water. And it was also terribly exciting.  
  
How desperate must you be to feel alive only in you last moment, when you finally come to face death?  
  
The pain in his arm was now distant. A sob escaped his broken lips and another tear left his eye, but now the pain that invaded him wasn't physical. No. Oh, no.  
  
 _But you won't do it, isn't it true, my little guinea pig? You never did it before, so why now?_  
  
No, not that way!  
  
Everything will be fine.  
  
Slowly, his hand trembling now that all determination was gone, Ned let go of the needle. It fell on the floor with a faint clink. And the sob turned into a scream, even before he could realize.  
  
Someone entered the room, hands grabbed him, voices spoke to each others, but he couldn't hear them. Not that it mattered. A laugh ecoued in his ears and a voice covered his desperate yells.  
  
 _You are ours._  
  
After all, that was how it went. 

**Author's Note:**

> Ned, forgive me.


End file.
